Web 2.0 Best Practices

Offering a consistent look and feel on the Web at a big university is a challenge. When implementing a content management system across hundreds of units or departments isn’t an option – for budget reason, some institutions have to adopt a different approach.

At the University of Alabama, the central web communications team includes only 4 people. That’s why Andy Rainey, director of Web Communications, is a big proponent of the “teach-them-how-to-fish” approach. His team has always designed and published web resources to help the larger university community get up to speed with their web presence, using more recently WordPress as their web platform of choice.

Last April they launched 3 branded WordPress themes to create the winning combo of ease of use with WordPress and consistency with a unique web template. With the release earlier this summer of WP 3.0, UA Web Communication Team was able to merge the 3 themes into a single one including some very powerful customization options to accommodate the special needs of different units on campus.

Here’s a regular second-level page, the Admissions web page on the main website:

And, here are a few screenshots of the WP 3.0 template:

I asked Andy Rainey, director of Web Communications at the University of Alabama, to answer a few questions about this project.

1) Did you develop the WP theme in-house? Who did it?

The theme was developed in-house by our Web Communications team, led by developer Matthew Muro. Matthew previously built and released our first UA-branded WordPress themes earlier this spring, but as the new WP 3.0 version emerged, he took the opportunity to significantly improve the functionality and flexibility of the themes. The 3.0 theme utilizes a custom admin panel that provides control of major design aspects of a site without requiring customization of the code itself. He was also able to create a single, united theme based on our UA Web Templates that provided a number of different layout and configuration options, instead of requiring users to choose which theme they wanted up front. In this way, we hope the theme becomes more fluid and flexible to current and future needs.

2) How did your campus community react to the launch of the WP themes?

The feedback we have received has been very positive. In fact, the provision of this theme is in large part the result of listening to much discussion among campus webmasters and functional users. The need for a “plug-and-play” solution for campus web sites has been the most significant need we’ve heard in the past few years, and while any solution requires some degree of effort and customization to be successful, we feel the theme is a great resource for units lacking full-time web expertise or resources to obtain that expertise to be able to easily build an accessible, usable, effective and institutionally-branded web site. The theme is provided as a true open-source resource, with no stipulations other than it must be used for an official or unofficial University of Alabama web site only, and that its usage must not violate general UA web policies. Significant time and energy has gone into creating tutorials and resources on our Web Guide site that make customizing the theme to meet specific needs a simpler process.

3) Do you provide hosting for their WP install? Do you offer to run their website from your own WP 3.0 install?

Hosting for WordPress web sites is available through the campus’s office of information technology, and they’re working to further streamline the process to improve how these sites are deployed and managed. As WP 3.0′s code base is now merged with WordPress MU, it should become easier and more efficient to roll out new WordPress web sites in a more scalable and repeatable manner going forward.

4) Any good examples of implemented WP UA websites to share?

This theme was just released a few weeks ago, so really it’s just getting started. But we have seen great results with using WordPress for institutional web sites, which informed our decision to offer WordPress themes. Our news center suite (UA news , Dialog – our faculty and staff newsletter and and our magazine Research) are custom WordPress sites, and by using WordPress we’ve been able to empower content providers to manage these sites almost exclusively. And we previously tested the first version of our UA WordPress themes with our own Editorial Style Manual as a proof-of-concept.
There are many campus web sites already using WordPress, so this new theme provides additional options for those sites to utilize institutional resources and offers others the ability to have that institutional brand. We’re treating this theme as one of our primary offerings to campus at large and we will continue to invest our time and resources to improving the themes and the resources available to those who wish to use them, with the goal of significantly improving the performance, consistency and effectiveness of our overall campus web presence through the most efficient means possible.

What’s great about flying across the country to attend a conference is the quality time I can get with my laptop.

I meant to post about this great initiative for more than a month now, but I couldn’t find enough quiet time to write it. My apologies.

Back in April, Nicole Sweeney Etter from Marquette University’s magazine brought to my attention a great online video that had been produced by a group of current students. Marquette Magazine published an article about this group, The Spanish O’Donnells, as it had “developed quite a campus following for their pop parodies and YouTube music videos.”

When he read this magazine profile, Dave Murphy, senior director of brand marketing at Marquette University contacted the students and asked them to create a music video for scholarship aid. The Spanish O’Donnells were given a fact sheet about financial aid as a starting point and just ran with it. “The guys were jotting down lyrics before they even left the office. At the guys’ request, we also provided some historical photos and video footage to mix with their own footage,” wrote Etter in her email.

The students recorded the music in a mini-recording booth set up in a dorm room closet. It took them about a month to write, record and edit.

The resulting video has been very successful. At the time of this writing, it has been viewed 9184 times.

Because it includes a very clear and specific call to action – i.e. donate money to support student scholarships, it was possible to measure its results.

The video was promoted to Marquette’s Alums via the university Facebook page and Twitter account as well as on the Give Marquette website. It was also used for an email campaign delivered to close to 38,000 alums and individuals including all donors and non-donors. The email signed by the University President, Father Wild, was sent on March 25 and invited alums to watch the video. The subject line of the email was “A clever video from our students.”

Thanks to Sara Harvey from University Advancement I can actually share with you some very interesting data about the results of this campaign:

• Email open rate: 31%
• Click-trough rate: 18.4% (only 6% in March 2009)
• Open to click-through rate: 59% (only 17% in March 2009)
• Unsubscribe rate: less than 1%
• 34 donations* for a total of $7615 three weeks after delivery (15 donations for a total of $3,832 in March 2009)

* The donations were determined by counting those constituents who clicked on a link to view the video and who also made a gift via the on-line giving form through 4/14/2010.

Sara Harvey also shared with me many replies made via Twitter, Facebook and email. I’m just including a couple below to give you an idea of the feedback the video and the email got from Marquette University alums:

I just wanted you to know that although I had stopped donating a few years ago (putting my own kids through college took most of the discretionary spending), a friend forwarded a link to the Spanish Odonnells’ video. I was immediately moved to donate. I’m happy to help support the education of such clever and talented students. I don’t know how you plan to disseminate this video, but I hope you will do so. This was so much more effective than the telephone call in the middle of “Grey’s Anatomy.”

If this is the kind of energy, communication creativity, and innovation that MU is developing in its students, and if this is how MU students are making efforts to understand generational differences connect with them in a diverse and inclusive message, and if is how they are astute enough to recognize past tradition and memories to connect with alumni to make a meaningful appeal for finanical aid… Then as an former MU student, I need to step up and match the that MU student enthusiasm, their skill,and demonstrate my support this kind of fantastic “reach-out” attitude at Marquette. I will be donating to the scholarship fund for the second time in five days, following an excellent call from an MU student on Sunday who also demonstrated that attitude through her telephone manner. We certainly need more of this “MU Creative Connectivity” in our business environments.

Marquette University also posted another video on YouTube including some of the comments made by alums about the song.

Wow. Amazing how a student-produced video can reach the hearts (and pockets ;-) of alums.

Has your institution used online videos in an original way? Let me know at karine@collegewebeditor.com or by posting a comment below.

I’m really excited to announce that Dave Olsen from WVU has finally decided to blog at Mobile in Higher Ed.

Dave did a tour-de-force last summer by developing in 19 days WVU mobile website. Last year he used the MIT Mobile platform. He has kept modifying the platform ever since to make it easier to adapt.

Mobile in Higher Ed – for when i need more than 140 characters

On August 4, Dave will present an updated and improved version of the 2-webinar series he gave last October for Higher Ed Experts, Going Mobile: How to Develop your Higher Ed Mobile Website. The series includes a demo where Dave will walk you through the different steps necessary to use the Mobile Open Source Platform, Mobile OSP. The demo will be available for registered participants as soon as June 28, so you can get started on your summer projects.

Going Mobile | Higher Ed Experts

Do you have online videos hosted on third-party websites such as YouTube, iTunes, Vimeo, etc. and wish they could all be found in one place – on a branded website within your domain name that will be automatically updated as soon as new videos are uploaded to the third-party websites?

Do you wish you could find a platform to invite your constituents (decentralized offices, faculty members, students and other campus community members) to submit video for you to review and use on this branded website?

Would you like such service to be free, easy to use and quick to implement?

Well, today is your lucky day, because I (with the help of the Duke team) found an open source web platform available for free (that will remain free if you choose to host your website on your server when the beta phase is over) that will do all of the above: Miro Community.

As hinted above, Duke University launched last month a website gathering all its online videos hosted on different online video sharing websites owned by different user accounts: Duke On Demand.

Duke on Demand

A couple of weeks ago, Ben Riseling, web operations manager, office of news and communications Meg McKee, program coordinator for Duke on Demand and Stephen Toback, senior manager, interactive technology services at Duke were kind enough to answer via email a few questions about this new service and its implementation.

1) Why did you decide to launch Duke on-demand? What problems were you trying to solve

As at many universities, video output at Duke has been growing rapidly over the past few years, and we also have a growing list of distribution channels such as YouTube, iTunes U, Futurity, BigThink and UStream. Michael Schoenfeld, Duke’s vice president of public affairs and government relations, asked us to produce a site that promoted all of these efforts in one place, and to tie it closely to the new Duke.edu website design. Essentially, we were hoping to create a higher-education version of popular video sites such as Hulu.

2) Can you tell us a bit more about the platform that powers Duke on Demand? Is it expensive

Duke on Demand uses open-source software developed by the Miro Community. The university’s main news and communications office, where we work, produces the site and organizes its content in collaboration with the central IT department, which provides technical expertise and support. Starting in February, we began a six-month pilot project to evaluate the systems, technology and approach.

Duke on Demand is an aggregator of video, not a publisher. It provides a user-friendly interface for viewing videos from our partners. The videos themselves are still hosted at these partner sites. This
approach provided us a scalable solution should our video requirements change in the future. We also didn’t need any additional hardware or support to run the site.

3) The site was launched just a few weeks ago. Can you tell us how it was received by the community? Any interesting traffic number or feedback?

We’ve received a lot of great feedback from across the university, and some key campus units, such as the alumni affairs office, have been highlighting it for their audiences. We’ve also been featuring the site on a new social media page we launched just a few days later. Since users can pull RSS feeds of the different categories of video, many units are starting to express interest in using these RSS feeds on their own websites.

We’ve just begun our outreach, and some of the reaction has been interesting. After we spoke with a group of arts communicators on campus, for example, one woman said that Duke on Demand inspires her to record more events for her department. Previously she would record the events but wasn’t sure how much they were watched. Duke on Demand now allows her videos to be seen and shared more widely. Since the RSS feeds refresh multiple times a day, once a department uploads the video to one of our distribution partners, the video can usually be promoted on Duke on Demand within a few hours. Our arts colleague joked that Duke on Demand is pushing her to do what she has had on her “to do” list for awhile, namely to start bringing a flip camera routinely to her department’s events on campus.

As you’d expect in the online world, the feedback can come very quickly. For example, we posted a video on a Monday about the 1000th game at Duke for our legendary Coach K. Our social media coordinator used the “Share This” link on Duke on Demand to share this video with Duke University’s Facebook page that same afternoon. By the next morning, there were 267 ‘likes’ and 38 comments on the Facebook post.

Want to know how easy it is to implement such a website?

Have a look at Higher Ed TV, a new website I’ve created in about 3 hours with the Miro Community platform. I’ll tell you more about this new project in a next post. In the meantime, feel free to explore and let me know what you think.

I stumbled on the UBC Admin Blog thanks to Martine Lafleur who shared its link on Twitter.

Yesterday, I took the time to explore this recently launched group blog aimed at enabling further dialogue between senior administration and students at the University of British Columbia.

While president blogs have been around for some time (President Michael Crow from ASU was one of the trailblazers, President John Meada at RISD has also been doing a great job at blogging), I hadn’t come across a blog by senior administrators that hold as many promises as the UBC Admin Blog (Well, Joe Hice’s Hice School is also a great blog, but I’ll put it in another category as Joe is a communicator by trade).

Frankly, what I found really surprising and interesting in the UBC Admin Blog was to find UBC VP of Finance, Resources, and Operations among the bloggers.

In those tough budget times in higher education, it’s pretty rare to see the people in charge of budget cuts get up front and personal to try to initiate open dialogue with students and other constituents.

The UBC Admin Blog — The administration connecting with students online.

Anyway, here are a few things UBC is doing right with this blog:

• A short video introduction from each blogger on the About page of the blog.
  It helps put a face on a name and can also help promote civility by reminding readers they are interacting with real human beings.

  Here’s the video introduction from Pierre Ouillet, the Finance VP.

• A great moderation policy highlighting in plain English what is ok and what is not when it comes to comments and available from one of the top navigation tabs of the blog.
  
• A conversational tone as shown in the first post written by Ouillet, From transparency to dialogue, and the direct reply to the comment of an international student about budget on his second post.

What do YOU think? Has your institution done something similar? Let us know by posting a comment!

As you probably know, I’ll be hosting “Start the (Word)Presses: How to create the online version of your print magazine or newsletter with WordPress” next Thursday (Jan 21st).

I designed this 2-webinar series to help magazine editors get a good and practical understanding of how WordPress can help them create an easy-to-produce online version for their print publication.

But, “why should magazine editors and writers use WordPress in the first place?” some of you might ask.

Here are my top 4 reasons:

WordPress is an online publishing platform
Yes, this one sounds obvious. However, it’s important to state that WordPress has been designed to publish timestamped articles that can be categorized and tagged with meta data (articles which are usually called blog posts). While publishing an online magazine requires a special kind of themes (i.e design templates) to break away from the blogging format – where everything is presented in reverse chronological order, many of these themes are now available for free or a fee. A knowledgeable web designer can also design a brand new customized theme.
As a result, many big and small online magazines are powered by WordPress in higher education and elsewhere.

WordPress offers several options when it comes to web hosting
Since it runs with PHP and MySQL, WordPress cannot work out of the box on any campus server (requirements for the latest version of WP can be found online). However, it can run on many servers (even on Windows servers although this requires a work around for rewriting web addresses produced by WP).
Your IT folks don’t want to hear about WordPress on THEIR servers? No problem, you can actually get a web hosting shared account and ask the person in charge of your DNS to help you set up a sub-domain such as magazine.universitydomain.edu that will point to your shared account IP address. It might sound complex, but it is really easy and quick to implement.
The person in charge of the DNS isn’t cooperative? No problem, you can decide to buy a domain name for your magazine and use it when you set up your web hosting shared account or even use wordpress.com as your web host and buy an upgrade to use your own domain name.

WordPress is simple and easy to use… and to customize
Once everything is set, adding and editing articles is a breeze. No need to know (or remember) your HTML as WP comes with a WYSIWYG editor that won’t scare the editorial team. Add a headline and the body of the article, pick the category and select a few tags… and you’re done.
With the different roles that can be assigned to your WP users, you can even simplify the backend for your editors or writers by showing them only the options they need.
Depending on your theme, you can also easily add a search box, republish the content of an RSS feed, a bit of text or HTML by using bundled widgets that can be just dropped into different areas of your theme.

WordPress is really a MULTIMEDIA publishing platform
Want to add pictures to your articles? No problem, you can upload them ahead of time or as you write (or paste) the text of your article. You can even perform some basic editing on your pictures within WordPress.
Want to add a YouTube video? With WP 2.9 and above, you can just paste the web address of the video and WordPress will take care of the rest.
Want to add an audio file, a photo gallery or slideshow? Several WP plugins can help you do it with just a couple of clicks.

Do YOU use WordPress for a magazine?
Tell us why you chose it by posting a comment!

I don’t know about you, but I’m always excited by the world of possibilities a new year offers. So, let me wish you the best for 2010. I gotta feeling it’s gonna be a good, good year (can’t you see me singing to the famous tune of the Black Eyed Peas?)

I’ve got a few resolutions (although I prefer to call them goals) put on paper.

What about you?

If you plan to add an online presence to your print magazine or newsletter (or even go totally digital), I’m sure you have already heard about the WordPress platform that powers some of the best digital magazines out there.

Well, if you want to find out how to create the online version of your print magazine or newsletter using WordPress, I have exactly what you and your team needs:

Start the WordPresses, a 2-webinar series including a live presentation on January 21, 2010 as well as a pre-recorded demo walking you through all the steps to set up your WordPress magazine. Here’s the description of this upcoming webinar series hosted by Higher Ed Experts.

Start The (Word)Presses:
How to create the online version of your print magazine or newsletter with WordPress
January 21st, 2010 – 1PM-2PM ET as well as an on-demand pre-recorded demo.

With tighter budgets and deadlines, more and more institutions recognize the need to improve the online versions of their magazines and newsletters.Many have chosen WordPress to get the job done. It is a very popular online publishing platform, because it is powerful, flexible and open-source.

Directed primarily to non-technical users, this 2-webinar series offers a step-by-step walkthrough of how to create the online version of your publication using WordPress. Find out best practices and useful tips to simplify the process. Tracy Mueller and Jason Molin from the University of Texas McCombs School of Business will also share with you a selection of WordPress themes and plugins to get you started.

What you will learn:

• How to install and setup WordPress
• What are the best practices to publish with WordPress
• How to select and use themes and plugins to simplify and speed up the process

If you register at www.higheredexperts.com/startwordpresses by January 11, 2010, you’ll get free access to the following on-demand 3-webinar series (a $350 value) until March 31st, 2010:

“Why and how to go digital with your magazine or newsletter” recorded on July 7, 8 & 9, 2009

This is a 3-webinar series that will show you why more and more higher ed institutions have gone digital with their news-oriented publications. It will also help you get ready for an eventual switch from print to electronic or to better integrate both media at your institution by sharing winning strategies, lessons learned and practical advice from editors of higher ed digital magazines.

• Going Paperless: How to prepare and survive the transition from print to digital
  John Lofy, Editor of Michigan Today, will explain why and how his 40-year old alum magazine took the paperless route by switching to a web magazine combined with an email newsletter. He will share lessons learned, practical tips and advice to prepare and survive this major change.
• Paper and Pixels 101
  Bonny Griffith, Editor of Fuse at Ithaca College, will tell you why and how her 2-year old hybrid print and digital magazine helped her institution reach prospective students. She will also share some winning strategies to integrate and optimize efforts using both media.
• The Editor’s Guide to the Digital Galaxy: How to edit a paperless and multimedia magazine
  Karl L. Bates, Manager of Research Communications and Editor of Duke Research will explain what it means to go from print to digital for writers and editors. He will share practical tips, winning strategies and useful pointers to write and edit a multimedia, digital and paperless magazine.

Have you watched “Reading Season, The Musical” yet?

This YouTube video was brought to my attention yesterday over Twitter via a quick post from TargetX Jeff Kallay.

As you’ve probably noticed, I always try to keep an eye on online videos produced in higher ed.
So, I watched it and immediately felt compelled to share it over Twitter:

Twitter / karinejoly: Wow, Udel has some real talent in the Admissions Office

This morning, I even got an email from a reader of the Higher Ed Experts newsletter who felt the same way and shared the link to this video.

It’s fun, under-5-minute long and is a great behind-the-scene look at the work done in an Admissions office at this time of the year – which is probably why it’s resonating so much within the community with more than 3,000 views on YouTube at the time of this writing.

That’s why I emailed Avi Amon, the UDel Admissions Counselor behind this video to ask a few questions about it.

1) Why did you decide to create this video? What is its target audience?

It’s an idea I’ve been toying around with for awhile, honestly. It’s always been a dream of mine to pursue composition full-time and/or write musical theater. I’m currently taking composition classes at Delaware in addition to working full time. I figured that creating this video was a perfect way to combine these segments of my life! My colleage and co-lyricist/performer, Drew, was an immeasurable help during the whole process.

While the primary target audience is definitely other college admissions counselors and high school guidance counselors, I think the humor and concept is broadly appealing. Students and parents have also left us very wonderful comments!

2) How did you produce it? How long did it take?

We actually have quite a bit of A/V equipment in our office for other marketing purposes. We’re in the process of making videos for all of our majors on campus to better educate and engage prospective (and undecided) students. I’ve learned that the key to good video is good audio, so we took care of that in my roommate’s mini-recording studio (which happens to be in our living room!) The video was shot on one of the office’s HD cameras and we edited it all down using Final Cut Pro at the University of Delaware Library. It took a weekend to plan, shoot, edit, and execute.

3) Was it a side project or something meant to be part of UDel recruitment strategy?

Definitely a side project. Drew and I had to come up with a short activity for our annual staff retreat and this is what happened! That being said, if the project continues – which I plan on – and other videos are made, it could definitely be used as a part of a grander University of Delaware recruitment push.

4) What kind of feedback did you get so far?

People have been LOVING it! And not just on campus either. It’s received some national attention from NACAC, TargetX, and plenty of other admissions offices around the country. We’re at 3000 hits and it’s only been 3 days since we published it!

I also think that the recent success of Glee (one of my favorite shows on TV) on FOX has contributed to our viewership. America is a very ‘musical’ place right now so it seems like the right climate for a project like this.

My latest UB column is now available in the November/December issue as well as online: “How to YouTube with Success: Six tips for optimizing online videos”

Here are the 6 tips:
1. Get listed on YouTube EDU.
2. Make videos that are easy to share.
3. Choose keyword-rich titles, descriptions, and tags for the videos.
4. Produce context-rich videos.
5. Don’t ignore your most fervent video fans—and critics.
6. Add closed-captioning.

University Business: How to YouTube with Success

I wrote this column a couple of months ago, after writing this post on how closed captioning can make a big difference but long before YouTube made an important announcement about new features using speech recognition on November 19: auto-timing and auto-captions.

Auto-timing will automatically synchronize your text-transcript with your videos.

Auto-caps will do ALL the work and is already used by several institutions such as UC Berkeley, Stanford, MIT, Yale, UCLA, Duke, UCTV, Columbia, etc.

You can find out more about these features by watching this video from YouTube:

BTW, if you are a University Business reader who has just discovered collegewebeditor.com, welcome! Don’t forget to subscribe to this blog via RSS or email.

It looks like the incredible success of the lipdub produced by students from UQAM in Montreal, QC (more than 2.5 million views as of this writing) has pushed some institutions in the US to finally join the university lipdub movement.

Texas State University in San Marcos did its lipdub on November 8th in the LBJ Students Center with about 30 students. Lisa Duncan, University Marketing videographer was behind the camera.

Twitter / kymfox: @TXSt students are doing a lipdub

The lipdub is available on Vimeo:

Texas State University – San Marcos Lipdub

There is also an interesting making of produced by the University Star, the student newspaper, on YouTube:

At the other side of the country, in Boston, Suffolk University students got their lipdub done on November 11th with about 50 of them and the help of the university communications office. They used a mash-up of songs from Queen for the music – a first for University lipdubs.

Jessica Krywosa, director of Web Communications at Suffolk, shared the link to this lipdub yesterday over Twitter and was kind enough to answer a few questions about it via email.

Twitter / Jessica Krywosa: Suffolk University Lip Dub …

1) How did the Office of University Communications work with student organizations? Did the students have full creative control?

We reached out through the student activities office on campus who worked with student groups to find interested parties. We also reached out via Facebook and Twitter to any student on campus. There was combined control: students had input on everything from the song chosen to the choreography and characters.

2) How many students took part in the lipdub and how long did the project take?
50 students and staff members participated. It took 6 weeks of work and 4 hours of work. It was shot on November 11th in three takes.

3) Why did the Office of University Communications decide to support the project and host it on its YouTube channel – which is a first?

The Comm office is the centralized office for all university social media efforts. We drive the strategy for the university brand in all instances, including online. The Comm office created an integrated social media strategy and therefore uses ‘their’ channels as the ‘Official University’ channels. We do not own the channel from an office standpoint but as a repository for collaboration: we channel all university video content there for greater reach. Same for our Flickr, Facebook and Twitter accounts, instead of segmenting it as ‘our’ office channel, we created it for everyone to supply content to and create a community around.

4) What is your take on the issue of copyright for the music? Is it the reason why you used a “mash-up”?

What we produced is a mash-up and we hope that it produces a greater interest in Queen and in Suffolk University but we certainly understand the limitations of the digital millennium copyright act. We could be asked to remove it. We aren’t charging for this content or using it for commercial purposes. As with all of the university lip dubs, they used copyrighted music (Black Eyed Peas, Thriller, etc) and are still on YouTube today.

While doing my research yesterday on YouTube, I stumbled upon the following 4 new university lipdubs of interest produced in the past few weeks in Japan (as an homage to the one done by UQAM students), in Quebec and in South Africa.